Events

Find out what’s happening in London this week…


 

 

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Monday 16 January

Nigeria in 2012: Crises and Reforms

Chatham House – 10.30am

Participants: Garba Sani, Arewa Association UK, Alistair Soyode, Founder and Chairman, BEN Television. Discussant: Tom Burgis, Financial Times

Protests over fuel subsidies have combined with an upsurge in extremist violence to create renewed uncertainty, and some alarm, over Nigeria’s prospects. This meeting will seek to evaluate the range of speculation that is appearing and offer a balanced and sober perspective on what is happening in different parts of this vast and complex country, as well as what positive role international partners might play.

 

Gender and Men’s Studies: peril or promise?

LSE – 6.30pm

Speaker: Professor Michael Kimmel

Gendering the Social Sciences: a Gender Institute public lecture. We hear, occasionally, that women’s studies discriminates against men. More often, it’s that women’s studies doesn’t include men. In this lecture, Kimmel will suggest that women’s studies provides an essential framework for understanding men’s lives, and that framework actually will enable men to experience richer and fuller lives. By addressing several key thematic areas — work, family life, sexuality — he will show that the insights generated by women’s studies are both available to men and, indeed, necessary for men to live the lives we say we want to live.

Michael Kimmel is among the world’s leading researchers on men and masculinities.  The University Distinguished Professor of Sociology at State University of New York, Stony Brook, he is the author of the best-seller, Guyland: The perilous World Where Boys Become Men as well as The Gendered Society, Manhood In America, Men’s Lives, A Gay’s Guide to Feminism, and many other works.  He is the founding editor for the scholarly journal Men and Masculinities.

 

Total Policing: the future of policing in London

LSE & British Government – 6.30pm

Speaker: Bernard Hogan-Howe. Chair: Professor Tim Newburn

The current commissioner of the Met and former chief constable of Merseyside Police will speak about his hopes and aspirations in relation to the future of policing in the capital.

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Tuesday 17 January

Engaging political Islam and the realities of the new Middle East

LSE – 5pm

Speaker: Wadah Khanfar. Chair: Charlie Beckett

Middle East Centre Arab Uprisings Lecture Series. The recent elections in Tunisia and Egypt have brought Islamist parties to power, a pattern that may very well repeat itself as uprisings turn to elections across the Arab world. In the west, this phenomenon has led to a debate about the ‘problem’ of the rise of political Islam. In the Arab world, too, there has been mounting tension between Islamists and secularists. As the Arab uprisings began, Wadah Khanfar, a former foreign correspondent in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, was the top executive at Al Jazeera, arguably the leading media source as the protests have unfolded, until he resigned in September 2011. As a former newsman and now CEO of Integral Media Strategies, Khanfar is in touch with some of the greatest thinkers and influential leaders and activists in the Middle East today and will reflect on what he sees as a necessary and long overdue debate about the rise of political Islam and where, politically and economically, he sees the region shifting as the rise continues.

Wadah Khanfar is the former Director General of the Al Jazeera Network. Khanfar, who resigned from the network in September 2011, has been named as one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 global thinkers of 2011 as well as one of Fast Company’s ‘Most Creative People in Business’ of the year. Khanfar has a diverse academic background with post-graduate studies in Philosophy, African Studies, and International Politics.

 

Patterns of Territorial Self-Governance in Europe: Institutional Legacies, Violence, and External Intervention

 LSE – 6pm

 Speaker: Professor Stefan Wolf. Chair: Professor James Hughes

Conflict Research Group and Department of Government public lecture. Professor Wolf will identify patterns in the territorial self-government of minority groups in Europe since 1945, showing the high success rage of claims for autonomy in western Europe but not in post-communist Europe.

Professor Wolf is a Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham. The author of 17 books, he specializes in the management of contemporary security challenges, ethnic conflict, international conflict, and state-building.

 

Social Policy and Social Justice in Greece: the unfair deficit

LSE – 6.15pm

Speaker: Professor Dimitris Venieris

The Hellenic Observatory research seminar. Professor Dimitris Venieris is a visiting Senior Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory, LSE. He is also associate Professor of Social Policy at the University of Peloponnese.

 

Israel: the strategy of the iron wall revisited

LSE – 6.30pm

Speaker: Professor Avi Shlaim. Chair: Professor Nigel Ashton

Department of International History annual lecture. This talk will focus on Israel’s “iron wall” strategy of dealing with the Arabs from a position of unassailable military strength, and how this strategy was applied by successive prime ministers.

Avi Shlaim is professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. His books include The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab world (2000); and Israel and Palestine: reappraisals, revisions, refutations (2009).

 

Egypt: After a year of military rule, what next?

Frontline – 7pm

Egypt’s ‘day of rage’ on Tuesday 25 January 2011 has been enshrined in Egypt’s history after millions of people took to the streets to oppose the tyranny and oppression of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of that day we will be joined by a panel of Egyptians to discuss their hopes for revolution in Egypt a year later.

Since 11 February, when Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down, Egypt has been governed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. In this time there have been a growing number of military trials, new anti-protest laws and protesters have been detained. In response, protests have continued in Tahrir Square.

With elections underway, we will be discussing how the future looks for the Egyptian people and the challenges that lie ahead.

Chaired by Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst at Al Jazeera. With: Hossam Abdalla, a leading Fertility Consultant and a political activist, he was one of the leaders of the student movement in the 70’s in Egypt. He is also father of actor, producer and activist Khalid Abdalla.

Ahdaf Soueif, Egyptian author, political and cultural commentator. Her most recent book is entitled Cairo: My City, Our Revolution;

Tarek Osman, Egyptian writer and author of Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak.

Abdel Latif El Menawy, author and journalist. As head of the news at the Egyptian Radio and Television Union he oversaw all news content, founded Radio Misr, and pioneered documentary broadcasts. Author of Tahrir: The Last 18 Days of Mubarak.

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Wednesday 18 January

Sonia Gandhi: Her Journey into Politics and Style of Governance in India

Chatham House – 12 noon

Participants: Rani Singh, South Asia specialist and author, Sonia Gandhi: An Extraordinary Life, An Indian Destiny

Sonia Gandhi represents the third generation of the Nehru-Gandhi family, a dynasty which has played a leading role in Indian politics since the country achieved independence. As President of the Indian National Congress, Ms Gandhi plays a pre-eminent role in running the coalition which governs the world’s largest democracy. The speaker will provide insight into the development of Sonia Gandhi’s personality and will discuss how she has been influenced by the concept of political dynasty in India.

70th Anniversary of Declaration by United Nations of January 1942

SOAS – 2pm

Speakers include: Dame Margaret Anstee, Bruce Clark, The Economist,  Sir Michael Howard, Sir Richard Jolly, Dr. Dan Plesch, Prof. Sir Adam Roberts, Prof. Thomas G. Weiss

The seminar at Lancaster House celebrates the 70th anniversary of a crucial diplomatic initiative of WW2: the Declaration by twenty six United Nations on 1st January 1942.

The Declaration resulted in a range of military and political initiatives leading to the United Nations Conference on International Organisation that created the UN Charter at San Francisco in 1945. The online 1946 UN Yearbook of the UN provides an account of these origins.

The seminar will discuss the issues of war fighting and human rights: then and now. As we face 21st Century challenges, leaders often refer to the vision of the wartime leaders, this seminar provides an opportunity to consider the contemporary relevance of their initiatives.

The EU in the global economy: challenges for growth

LSE – 5pm

Speaker: Mario Monti

LSE European Institute-APCO Worldwide Perspectives on Europe series.

Mario Monti is Italian Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy and Finance, positions he has held since 16 November 2011. He was President of Bocconi University, Milan, from 1994 to November 2011, when, upon his request, he was suspended from his functions as President of Bocconi for the duration of his mandate as President of the Council of Ministers. He was also European chairman of the Trilateral Commission and honorary president of Bruegel, the European think-tank he launched in 2005.

 

Cyber War & Cyber Arms Limitation

King’s College London – 4pm

Speaker: Dr. Qichao Zhu, Visiting Senior Research Fellow & Deputy Director of the Center for National Security and Strategic Studies (CNSSS)

With the development and proliferation of ICT in recent years, governments, international organizations and private sectors have invested a lot of strategic, tactical and technological concerns on cyber security issues world widely. How to define and differentiate cyber crime and cyber war? How to understand cyber war escalation and de-escalation? Why the western countries always criticize China on cyber espionage cases and look on China as a potential rival on future cyber conflicts? What are the obstacles and difficulties on international cyber arms limitation? Dr. Zhu tries to give some Chinese perspectives on these questions and deliver some recommendations to international cyber security cooperation.

 

Supporting Reform on the Mediterranean’s Southern Shores: The Role of Multilateral Cooperation

LSE – 6.30

Speaker: Dr Lino Cardarelli Chair: Dr Katerina Dalacoura

UPDATE: Thursday 12 January, this lecture will now be delivered by Dr Lino Cardarelli as Youssef Amrani has stepped down from his position at the Union for the Mediterranean. LSE European Institute-APCO Worldwide Perspectives on Europe series. After the Arab Spring, lasting political change in North Africa will require sustained regional cooperation to promote economic integration and efficient and accountable governance. What should a bold plan of action look like?

Lino Cardarelli is Senior Deputy Secretary General for Project Funding Coordination and Business Development SMEs in the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean, a position he has held since 2010. From March to June 2011 has also covered the position of Acting Secretary General in the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean.

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Thursday 19 January

Unweaving the Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing System: Complexity, Simplicity and Paradox

Gresham College – 6pm

Speaker: Dr Dionysios S Demetis

Despite the onslaught of legislative initiatives surrounding AML/CTF, it is difficult to make any conclusive remarks on the effectiveness of the broader system that attempts to control money laundering and terrorist financing. Based on his new book on ‘Technology and Anti-Money Laundering’, the speaker will unravel much of the complexity surrounding AML and offer practical advice for financial institutions.

 

Weathering the Weather? – Community Resilience in an Unstable Climate

SOAS – 6.30

Speakers: Kan Hiroshi Sato (Institute of Developing Economies, Japan); John Twigg (University College London); and Jin Sato (Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo)

As part of their new partnership, JICA and SOAS are co-hosting a series of three seminars around the theme of ‘Disaster Management – Avoiding a Circus in Addressing a Crisis’.

The third and final seminar in the series will look at key factors that create resilient communities able to reduce their vulnerability to (and withstand the shocks from) natural disasters in an increasingly urbanised world. It will focus in particular on the resilience of the Japanese people who are widely recognised as being the most ‘disaster-prepared’ communities in the world, and examine their efforts leading up and following the Japan disaster in March 2011. Issues discussed will include:

Governance

Risk assessment

Knowledge and education

Risk management and vulnerability reduction

Disaster preparedness and response

 

EU Foreign Policy after Lisbon: The View from the Mediterranean

LSE – 6.30pm

Speakers: Professor Atila Eralp, Professor Richard Gillespie, Dr Sharon Pardo. Chair: Professor Karen E. Smith

European Foreign Policy Unit and Department of International Relations public roundtable. This roundtable on ‘EU Foreign Policy after Lisbon: The View from the Mediterranean’ looks at how the EU is perceived as a foreign policy actor in its southern neighbourhood.

Professor Atila Eralp is from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara; Professor Richard Gillespie is from the University of Liverpool and Dr Sharon Pardo is from Ben Gurion University. Professor Karen E Smith is from LSE.

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Friday 20 January

The Global Water and Food Security Challenge: Sustainable Intensification and Local and Global Food Supply Chains?

SOAS – 1.15pm

Speakers: Tony Allan, Professor of Geography, King’s College London, and Professorial Research Associate, DeFiMS and Development Studies, SOAS

Seminar Series: SOAS Food Forum

 

From Oum Kalthoum to Fairuz and beyond

SOAS – 7pm

Artist: Jaljala feat. Merit Ariane

Series: SOAS Concert Series. Young and talented, singer Merit Ariane Stephanos has teamed up with veterans of the London Arabic scene to present a delightful programme of Arabic classical, popular and folk songs, mainly from Egypt and Lebanon repertoire. Classics by such luminaries as Fairuz, Abdel Halim Hafiz and Oum Kalthoum are brought to new life with flair and feeling.


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Thursday 1 March

Class Wars/Culture Wars: Owen Jones and the Chavs

 

LSE Gender Institute Literary Festival Event

5-6:30 in the Sheik Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

Speakers: Sue Christoforou, Professor Mary Evans, Owen Jones

The recent riots in parts of England have focussed increased attention on what has increasingly been described as the ‘underclass’ of English society. Various politicians have clambered (or leapt) onto a bandwagon that has defined this group as beyond civil society. Many of the people regarded as dangerous are young and male and one half of the ‘chavs’ who have been the subject of Owen Jones’s book. But who are ‘these people’ and has a social identity been created for them that sees only the negative in their behaviour?

Sue Christoforou is a policy analyst and campaigner. She has worked for a number of national campaigning organisations, including Mind, Macmillan Cancer Support and DrugScope.

Mary Evans is centennial professor at the Gender Institute, LSE.

Owen Jones is author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. He has worked in parliament as a trade union lobbyist and parliamentary researcher.

 

The Fight for Free Speech: forty years on

 

Index on Censorship 40th Anniversary Literary Festival Event

7-8:30pm in the Sheik Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

Speakers: Pavel Litvinov, Michael Scammell

Acclaimed writer and founding editor of Index on Censorship Michael Scammell and former Russian dissident Pavel Litvinov discuss the nature of censorship and the future of freedom of speech. It was Pavel Litvinov’s courageous public appeal to the West for help, during a Soviet show trial in 1968, that inspired the creation of Index on Censorship magazine, a forum for banned writers, artists and intellectuals in the struggle against censorship. Forty years on, as Index on Censorship celebrates its anniversary, this will be a rare opportunity to hear an illuminating discussion from two leading voices in the history of free speech.

Michael Scammell is the author of The Indispensable Intellectual, the authorised biography of Arthur Koestler.  Pavel Litvinov is a writer, physicist and human rights activist.

Jo Glanville is editor of Index on Censorship.

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Friday 2 March

Terrorism on Film: propaganda and profit

Centre for the Study of Human Rights Literary Festival event

12:30-2pm in Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building

Speakers: Professor Chetan Bhatt, Professor Tony Shaw

Many who witnessed the 9/11 terrorist attacks live on television described it as being ‘just like a movie’. Was this just a throwaway comment or does it tell us something important about how movies have influenced our understanding of terrorism?

With the aid of film clips, this event will explore how filmmakers from across the world and over the past century have dealt with the subject of terrorism, and how cinema has impacted on people’s conception of terrorism.

Chetan Bhatt is professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, LSE.

Tony Shaw is professor of Contemporary History at the University of Hertfordshire. He is currently writing a global history of cinematic terrorism, dating from the 1920s to the present.

 

Relating the Divided City in South Africa

LSE Department of Anthropology Literary Festival Event

6-7:30pm in New Academic Building 2.04

Speakers: Denis Hirson, Kopano Matlwa, Dr Andrew van der Vlies

In new South African fiction, writers ‘relate cultures’ in two senses. They have found new ways of exploring connections amongst diverse languages and cultures (and pasts and presents). Replacing the seriousness of novels about the racism of the past and its effects, a new playfulness is emerging, with whimsical humour much in evidence – yet the themes explored remain grounded in important issues of cultural and racial dividedness. Writers also show remarkable inventiveness in respect of the mode of relating, investigating new and changing styles of narrative.

Denis Hirson is author of Worlds in One Country,  I remember King Kong (The Boxer)and The Dancing and the Death on Lemon Street. Kopano Matlwa is author of Coconutand Spilt Milk. Dr Andrew van der Vlies is senior lecturer, Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London, and author of South African Textual Cultures, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace: A Reader’s Guide.

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Saturday 3 March

Approaches to Bamiyan: Afghanistan’s Cultural Crossroads

 

LSE Literary Festival Event

11am-12:30pm in Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building

Speakers: Dr Llewelyn Morgan

Dr Llewelyn Morgan explores historical and contemporary approaches to one of Afghanistan’s most famous monuments, the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Their location’s strategic position, controlling passage through the Hindu Kush, has seen a fascinatingly diverse array of visitors and commentators- from Muslims and Christians, to 19th Century classicists on the trail of Alexander the Great and, more recently, UN mine-clearers.

Llewelyn Morgan is a classicist, normally occupied reading Classical Latin poetry, and a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. He has worked in Ireland and the US as well as the UK, writes regularly for the TLS and can occasionally also be heard on Radio 4. His interest in Afghanistan was sparked by discovering an old Russian samovar in his grandmother’s house, engraved with the words “Candahar 1881″, a relic of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The Buddhas of Bamiyan will be published in the spring of 2012.

Paddy Docherty was educated at Oxford University. His graduate research into British imperial history led him to the North West Frontier and he travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the winter of 2003 to research The Khyber Pass, his first book.

 

Storytelling and Translation 

 

LSE Language Centre Literary Festival Event

1-2:30pm in Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building

Speakers: Marina Lewycka, Jeremy Sams, George Szirtes

A panel of experts discuss translation and storytelling in novels, poetry and opera. Are there fundamental elements to storytelling that are shared across cultures, languages and genres? What is lost, and what is created, in translation?

Followed by a reading of the winning entry in the LSE micro-fiction student competition and a performance by students of a classic one act play.

Marina Lewycka was born in a refugee camp in Germany in 1946 and moved to England with her family when she was about a year old. She spent most of her life since then trying to become a writer, and finally succeeded in 2005 with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian which has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone. This was followed by Two Caravans in March 2007 and We Are All Made of Glue in July 2009.  Her latest novel is Various Pets Alive and Dead.

Jeremy Sams is a translator of opera libretti as well as a lyricist, theatre director, composer, orchestrator and musical director. His latest work, The Enchanted Island, recently opened to critical acclaim at the New York Metropolitan Opera. His many translations include Mozart’s Figaro’s WeddingLa BohemeThe Magic Flute and Wagner’s The Ring Cycle (English National Opera); The Merry Widow (Covent Garden); and Les Parents TerriblesThe Miser and Mary Stuart (Royal National Theatre). His film scores have won awards from BAFTA (Persuasion) and Ivor Novello (Enduring Love). As a theatre director his credits include Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Sound of Music(Palladium), Noises Off (West End and Broadway) and The Wind in the Willows (Old Vic).

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956, following the Hungarian Uprising. He has published some thirteen books of poetry in English, most recently Reel (2004), New and Collected Poems (2008) and The Burning of the Books (2009). These have won the Faber Prize, the Cholmondeley Award and, most recently the T S Eliot Prize. As a translator from Hungarian he has published and edited several books of prize-winning poetry and fiction. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and teaches at UEA.

 

Faith, Doubt and Certainty in a Secular Age

LSE Literary Festival discussion

3-4:30pm in Sheik Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

Speakers: Richard Holloway, Alex Preston

The former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway’s memoir, Leaving Alexandria,recounts a life defined by the struggle between public faith and private doubt.  Alex Preston’s latest novel, The Revelations, portrays the power of a religious movement amongst a group of young people, exploring why people still need faith in a secular era, and the battle between belief and doubt.  Together they will discuss the place of faith, doubt and certainty in our secular modern age.

Richard Holloway was Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. A former Gresham Professor of Divinity and Chairman of the Joint Board of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen, he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has written for many newspapers in Britain, including The Times,Guardian, ObserverHerald and the Scotsman. He has also presented many series for BBC television and radio; his new series, on doubt, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this spring.

Alex Preston was born in 1979 and lives with his family in London. His first novel, the bestselling This Bleeding City, won the Edinburgh festival Reader’s First Book awards and the Spear’s First Book Award, and has been translated into twelve languages. Preston writes and reviews for the New Statesman and the Observer and is a regular panellist on BBC2’s The Review Show.

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Tuesday 13 March

The Middle East in Transition: Syria and the ‘Arab Spring’

Samir Aita, Le Monde diplomatique and Gilbert Achcar, SOAS

5:45-7pm at Russell Square: College Buildings, Khalili Lecture Theatre

Series: Lecture Programme on the Contemporary Middle East

Hellenic Observatory public research seminar

6:15-7:45 in the Canada Blanch Room, COW 1.11, Cowdray House

Speaker: Dr. Theofanis Exadaktylos

Dr Theofanis Exadaktylos is the Ministry of Finance Research Fellow in the Hellenic Observatory at LSE and a Lecturer in European Politics at University of Surrey.

This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. For any queries phone and email the Hellenic Observatory on +44 (0)20 7955 6066 or hellenicobservatory@lse.ac.uk. You can also find details on this event on the Hellenic Observatory website.

 

Enemies: A History of the FBI

LSE public lecture

6:30-8pm in the Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House

Speaker: Tim Weiner

The United States is a country founded on the ideals of democracy and freedom, yet throughout the last century it has used secret and lawless methods to destroy its enemies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the most powerful of these forces.
Following his award-winning history of the C.I.A., Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner has now written the first full history of the F.B.I. as a secret intelligence service, Enemies: A History of the FBI which he will talk about in this lecture. Drawn entirely from firsthand materials in the F.B.I.’s own files, Enemies brilliantly brings to life the entire story, from the cracking of anarchist cells to the prosecution of the ‘war on terror’. It is the story of America’s war against spies, subversives and saboteurs – and the self-inflicted wounds American democracy suffered in battle. Throughout the book lies the long shadow of J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the F.B.I. with an iron fist for forty-eight years. He was not a monster, but a brilliant confidence man who ruled by fear, force, and fraud. His power shaped America; his legacy haunts it.

Tim Weiner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, where he has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and fifteen other nations. He was based for a decade in Washington, DC, where he covered the C.I.A. and the Military – the latter topic being the subject of his Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget. He is the author of the bestselling Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, which won the 2007 National Book Award for Non-Fiction.

 

Challenges of Economic Development in Kosovo: between corruption and institution building

6:50-8:40pm in CLM 5.02, Clement House

Speakers: Iraj Hashi, Avni Zogjani

Chair: Dr. William Bartlet

This is a panel debate organised by the LSE SU Albanian Society and LSE’s Research on South East Europe unit. The speakers will discuss the problems and prospects of socio-economic development in Kosovo in light of persisting problems with corruption, challenges with governance, institution- and state-building, and the continuing ethnic tensions.

Avni Zogiani began his work as journalist in April 1997 on the first independent daily newspaper in Prishtina, “Koha ditore”. Still an apprentice, less than one year of work, in 1998, faced the challenge of reporting from the front line when conflict definitely broke out in March. Beyond the conflict, challenges in a post-conflict society were not less dangerous. In 2002 he left temporarily journalism to do a study in Indiana University in USA where studied media and public relations. Soon after coming back from States, he realized that the media landscape will change irreversibly with more and more political grip now over the daily press as well. The year 2003 was the year when he left Kosovo for another break to University of Sussex, where in Sussex European Institute did an MA in Contemporary European Studies. The Organization for Democracy, Anticorruption and Dignity – COHU!, established by the end of 2005, was the next approach of him and his friends as a response to a considerable grip of politics over the media and the civil society. They set this organization with the mission to fight against political corruption, organized crime and in favour of public integrity. COHU! remains current work followed with other kinds, though ever harder, challenges.

Iraj Hashi completed his undergraduate education in Petroleum Refinery Engineering in Iran (Abadan Institute of Technology), Masters’ studies in the United States (University of Maryland) and Doctoral studies in the UK (University of Keele). He had already taught economics at Simon Fraser University (Canada), Tehran Business School (Iran) and University of Keele when he started his teaching career at the University in 1978 as a Lecturer in Economics (the institution was called North Staffordshire Polytechnic at that time). His area of specialization has always been microeconomics, industrial economics and, since the early 1990s, economics of transition. He has been the Senior Award Tutor for the undergraduate economics programme, post-graduate economics programme and, most recently, the Research Degree Programme (MPhil and PhD) at the Business School. He has also coordinated the School’s Erasmus, Socrates and Tempus programmes and its activities in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to his teaching, research and course management responsibilities at the University, he has been actively involved in research, teaching and consultancy in transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe since 1992, and has worked with universities and research and consultancy institutions in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Macedonia, Poland and Russia on a range of projects dealing with challenges of transition in these countries. These projects have been funded by the European Commission, World Bank and other national and international agencies.

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Wednesday 14 March

Gender, Colonialism and Development

Professor Andrea Cornwall (University of Sussex)

1-3pm in Brunei Gallery, Room B102 SOAS

Type of Event: Seminar

Series: Anthropology of Development Seminar

Organiser: Dr. Richard Axelby

 

The Halal Frontier: Muslim Consumers in a Globalized Market

Dr. Johan Fischer, Roskilde University, Denmark

3-4:30pm at Russell Square: College Buildings, Room G51

Type of Event: Seminar

Series: Social Anthropology Seminar Series

Contact email: kl1@soas.ac.uk

Liberal peace and biopolitical war in Sri Lanka

Dr. Dave Rampton and Dr. Suthaharan Nadarajah (both SOAS)

4-6pm at Russell Square: College Buildings, Room 4418

Type of Event: Seminar

Series: Politics and International Studies Departmental Seminars

Chair: Dr Mark Laffey

 

Has the Future a Left?

Ralph Miliband Series on The Future of the Left in association with the Department of Sociology

6:30-8pm in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

Speaker: Professor Zygmunt Bauman

Chair: Professor Paul Gilroy

Being on the left in times of globalisation and divorce of power and politics. New mechanisms of domination and reproduction of inequality, from society of producers to society of consumers. From proletariat to precariat. From solidarity to oneupmanship. Deficit of trust, crisis of agency, and people on the move.

Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds. He was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences in 1991 and the Theodor W. Adorno Award of the city of Frankfurt in 1998. He has been awarded in 2010, jointly with Alain Touraine, the Príncipe de Asturias PrizePrize for Communication and the Humanities. The University of Leeds launched the The Bauman Institute within its School of Sociology and Social Policy in Bauman’s honour in September 2010.

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Thursday 15 March

Critical Rationalism and Religious and Political Reform in Iran

Sir Karl Popper Memorial Lecture

6-7:30 in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

Speaker: Professor Abdulkarim Soroush

Chair: Professor John Worral

Professor Soroush will discuss the role of philosophy – and Popper’s thought in particular – in Iranian religious and political reform.

Abdulkarim Soroush is a leading intellectual in Iran and has held visiting positions at, amongst other institutions, Harvard and Princeton.

This event is supported by The Sir Karl Popper Memorial Fund.

The Popper Memorial Fund would like to thank the Austrian Cultural Forum for the generous support they have offered toward the 2012 Lecture

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Friday 16 March

Eating as the Moral Philosophy of Everyday Life

Richard Wilk, Provost Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University

1:15-2:45pm at Russell Square: College Buildings, Room 4418

Type of Event: Seminar

Series: SOAS Food Forum

Organiser: Dr Harry West

Contact email: soasfoodstudies@soas.ac.uk

 

 

God’s Money Managers: Volatile Markets and the Problem of Planning a Life

Department of Anthropology academic talk

6-8pm in the NAB1.04 New Academic Building

Speaker: Caitlin Zaloom

Chair: Dr. Laura Bear

Caitlin Zaloom is Associate Professor at NY University: Areas of Research/Interest: culture and economy; cities and globalization; financial markets; technology and cities; science and technology studies; social theory.

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Saturday 17 March

Palestine and the Uprisings

9:30am-6:30pm in Brunei Gallery, Room Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre

Type of Event: Conference

Please book in advance as seats are limited

Tickets:  £12 (£10 concessions) – all tickets include lunch (refreshments for purchase at SOAS JCR)

For further information and to buy tickets online visit www.soaspalsoc.org or by cheque payable to ‘SOAS Palestine Society’ with an attached note of e-mail address to: SOAS Palestine Society, Thornhaugh Street, London WC1H 0XG

Organiser: SOAS Palestine Society and hosted by the Centre for Palestine Studies

Contact email: palestineconference@gmail.com